Q&A with Oregon State President Ed Ray, one of the most influential leaders in college sports

Bruce Ely/The OregonianOregon State President Ed Ray say for a two-hour interview with The Oregonian this week, discussing the competitive gap in college sports, where a tight budget most hurts the Beavers and who rogue coaches have to blame for the NCAA's recent decision to link them to their athletes' academic scores.

CORVALLIS -- Ed Ray wears with pride a 2007 Oregon State baseball national championship ring, praises the character of football coach Mike Riley and highlights the gymnastics team's recent high finishes.

But Ray isn't just a fan with access to great seats. The Oregon State president, in that job since 2003, holds one of the most influential positions in college sports.

Through April 2012 he is chairman of the NCAA's Executive Committee, which must approve any proposed change before it can become NCAA law. He monitored negotiations for the recent 14-year, $10.8 billion dollar TV contract for the NCAA men's basketball tournament. He served on the search committee for the next NCAA president, who turned out to be Washington President Mark Emmert.

In 2007 Jim Isch, NCAA chief operating officer, asked Ray to join the Executive Committee and chair the finance subcommittee. Ray, a Ph.D. in economics, recently had become the Pac-10's representative to the NCAA Division I Board and had been a vice president at a school operating at the highest levels of college athletics: Ohio State.

Recently Ray, 65, sat with The Oregonian for a two-hour interview, discussing the competitive gap in college sports, where a tight budget most hurts Oregon State and who rogue coaches have to blame for the NCAA's recent decision to link to them their athletes' academic scores.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How close was the NCAA to going to a 96-team tournament?

Not very close. Nobody had agreed to do it. The long and short of it was, the NCAA bought the rights to the NIT in 2005 and agreed it would run for five years unchanged in Madison Square Garden. So the reason why 96 came up was, we have the NCAA, which is 64, the NIT is 32, which is 96. That's what really got the conversation expedited.

We asked potential bidders what they would offer for 96 versus 64 -- or 65, really. We sort of got to a point with CBS/Turner and we said, "Well, we like that number for 65 (games) but the membership has to decide the size of the tournament." And that's the deal we signed. We went to 68, as you know, instead of 65, and that was really to give one team from each region a way to play its way in.

We got not just CBS Sports, but CBS and Turner Corporation, to guarantee the contract. So if something were to happen to one of the partners, they basically are all liable for the contract.

What's it like to be in on negotiations for an $11 billion contract -- one of the biggest in sports?

It really didn't settle in until it was over. Then you say, $10.8 billion. That's a lot of money. But I'll tell you, I had a much different self-interest. My self-interest was, that was the biggest financial piece that the NCAA has to be concerned with. That's tied up for 14 years.

The second-biggest thing that I was involved in was finding a new president for the NCAA. I was pretty clear: I wanted someone younger than me who had a good 10 or 15 years in him or her, and someone I thought would a terrific job so that would be done for 10 or 15 years and I would be home free.

I think we got that with Mark Emmert. He's just wonderful. Plus, we crippled the Huskies. I mean, we got their president and put him in Indianapolis.

What has been the most eye-opening in your three years of NCAA involvement?

Something that I wouldn't have imagined being in a conversation about: They now put out the coaches' APR (a measure of a team's academic progress). Eventually they're going to put out their lifetime APR for all coaches in all sports, which I think is terrific. Presidents and chancellors can't say, "We didn't know this guy was a slug."

I just said, "Well, if we're getting this data, why don't we publish it?" And there was some grumbling about it and discussion. Nancy Zimpher, who was on the Division I board representing the University of Cincinnati, she and I just kept badgering people, "Why don't we make this public?"

With conference-jumping and talk of TV deals spiking in the past several months, I think some fans feel like tradition is falling by the wayside and college sports have become all about the money. Is that an accurate perception?

My perception as a fan: I look at something like Nebraska-Oklahoma. How do you not have Nebraska-Oklahoma? That's a pretty long-standing rivalry. So I think when you see the smoke clearing on some of the changes that have occurred, it does seem that traditional rivalries didn't get maybe as much consideration as they should have.

Certainly in our discussions, we talked to (Pacific-10 Conference commissioner) Larry (Scott) and Larry sort of went forth and looked at possibilities. We were pretty sensitive about traditional rivals. Texas-Texas A&M, Texas Tech. ... There was some real consideration given to who are the natural rivals of different schools.

I think in our discussions going forward, becoming the Pac-12 next year or the year after -- I hope it's next year -- we'll probably have divisions and a conference championship. As much as we hate the Ducks, we love to play them. Same for them. So to play them every year, that will be part of the package, hopefully, when we finally figure that out.

Bruce Ely/The OregonianOSU President Ed Ray, a strong supporter of college sports, wears a ring celebrating the Beavers' 2007 college baseball national championship.

Speaking of Oregon, that athletic department has become self-sufficient in recent years, while Oregon State has run an operating debt. Why haven't the Beavers been able to eliminate that?

It's a never-ending battle. But I tell people that if you look at what we put into athletics in terms of education and general funds, it's about $4 million a year. I tried to cut that back over the last four or five years, got it down to 2 1/2, and it was clear they were bleeding to death. So we're at about $4 million a year. But it's a $54 million-a-year program.

I'm an economist. Eight cents on the dollar is pretty damn good, I think, as an investment. Would I rather it be zero? Yes. Would I rather have them actually make money? Yes. Are there very many programs that can do that? No. I'd like to see us over time be able to drive that down, and media contracts are part of that.

What about the notion, more generally, that college athletics spending is out of control?

It turns out that on average, universities are spending five to six percent of their entire budget on athletics. So even if it gets a little crazy, this is not going to sink the ship. As a proportion of overall activity, it's not that great a share. And it's remained pretty steady.

At the same time, you look at the spread between the lowest (budgets) and the highest, I think we don't talk enough about, are we playing on a level playing field?

Is a school with a $10 million budget, when they show up to play the school with a $138 million budget, are we looking at apples to apples or are there elements of unfair competition on the playing field associated with that great disparity in the nature of budgets that are available? I'm not sure.

A lot of people are saying, "You've got all these conferences and they're getting bigger. The NCAA's going to become irrelevant."

I actually think that if the conferences themselves are at all reflective, as I think the Big Ten has been -- I think the SEC does revenue-sharing as well -- that that actually is a very pro-competitive force. And it's not surprising because you would think that the value of the media contract would be directly related to how solid the competition is.

It used to be Oklahoma and the Seven Dwarves back in the '50s. Well, who wants a contract for that? But if you have a solid conference -- I think it's the SEC that has six teams in the top 25 preseason poll -- well, that's great.

I saw recently that Oregon football coach Chip Kelly offered OSU coach Mike Riley a ride home from Pacific-10 Conference media day in Los Angeles on the private plane he was using, because Riley's commercial flight didn't leave until the next day. (Riley accepted.) Is that scene symbolic of where those respective athletic departments are financially?

It's hard to imagine that if you have tremendous resources and facilities that that isn't attractive to kids and their families. But I think the substance of what they see matters a lot. In that sense, I don't see us at a substantial disadvantage.

I think where you see a real difference is in the Directors' Cup (that ranks schools by performance across all sports). I think the ability to compete at the highest level across the board surely is related to what you've got in the way of resources. (Oregon finished 14th in 2009-10; Oregon State finished 68th.)

Stanford's won it for the past 16 years in a row. I was a graduate student there, and they were rich then and they're richer now.

Given that, can Oregon State keep up?

The good news is, if you get the right people, you can do more than your dollars would suggest. Southern Cal was very interested in Mike Riley as Pete Carroll's replacement. If he cared about the money, there's no way we could keep him here.

What's the next big issue in college sports you feel you need to tackle?

Are there mechanisms out there that we can use so everybody can see everybody's (financial) data? You can go online and find out how every dime at Oregon State is spent. I don't know how easily that'll go down. There are a lot of private colleges and universities that are part of the NCAA.

The second thing: How do we raise the bar on academics? Maybe you give (financial) awards to schools that are above a 975 (APR). The idea that I liked best is you shouldn't be able to play in the NCAA Tournament if you've had more felons than college graduates on your basketball team.

Also, I'm really concerned about the lack of diversity throughout college athletics in leadership positions. You look at the racial makeup of all of the competitive sports and you look at the profile for athletic directors, associate vice presidents for athletics, coaches, assistant coaches... we're not getting it done as far as I can tell. I'm not sure what we can do, but we're not zeroing in on it enough.